Over 80% of North’s teachers unqualified, says NTI chief

THE Director-General of the National Teachers Institute (NTI), Kaduna, Dr. Aminu Ladan Sharehu, has said less than 20 per cent of teachers in the North are qualified to teach.

Also, Kaduna State Governor Mukthar Ramalan Yero has said only 50 per cent of teachers on the government’s payroll are qualified to teach.

Yero and Dr. Sharehu spoke yesterday at a national conference on: Quality Assurance and Control in Teacher Education as a Tool for Achieving Millennium Development Goals, organised by Federal College of Education, Zaria.

The NTI conducts in-service training for national Certificate in Education (NCE) teachers across the country through distance learning.

But NTI chief said over 80 per cent of teachers in the North, especially those in primary schools are not qualified to teach.

He explained that the figure was a sharp contrast with what obtains in the South, where the teachers are qualified.

Dr Sharehu said several factors are responsible for the high number of half-baked teachers in the North, adding that many of them have never attended any training since they were employed.

He said: “Over 80 per cent of teachers in the North are under-qualified because there is no motivation. You need to train and retrain teachers because NCE is just a starting point.

“In teaching, we don’t have learned people, but learning people. This is because we believe that there is no end to learning till death. So, it is only lawyers that are proudly calling themselves learned.

“As for what is really responsible for poor qualification of teachers in the North, I will save that for another day. But there is need for an increase in teachers’ salary, continuous increase in their remuneration to make them better teachers.”

Yero, who was represented by the Commissioner for Education, Mohammed Usman, said the government had given the nearly 50 per cent unqualified teachers in the state an ultimatum to get requisite education.

He said: “The Federal Ministry (of Education) stipulates that the minimum teaching qualification in our schools should be NCE. But majority of teachers we have today in the system are not NCE holders. So, how can they qualify to teach the new curriculum? There is no way. That means they are under-qualified. Believe me, many of our teachers today are under-qualified.

“When I came on board as the Commissioner for Education in Kaduna State, I discovered that 50 per cent of the teachers, particularly those in primary schools, were under-qualified.

“There is no way they can do the job very well. I have to give them a time frame of five years within which to upgrade their qualifications and become NCE holders…”